The share of foreign born workers in the U.S. labor force continues to rise. According to recently released Labor Department statistics, the labor force included twenty six point three million foreign born persons in twenty fifteen.
As reported by the Wall Street Journal, that amounts to nearly seventeen percent of the labor force, the highest level on records dating back two decades. The share of foreign born workers in America’s labor force was in the range of eleven percent in nineteen ninety six and approached sixteen percent in two thousand and seven.
The share declined during the recession, due in large measure to the loss of construction and other jobs that had made heavy use of foreign born labor. The Labor Department does not distinguish between workers in the U.S. here legally or illegally, but the Pew Research Center has found that the number of illegal immigrants has remained stable for the past five years at above eleven million.
Some favor stepped up immigration and point to a recent study indicating that immigrants started more than half of the current crop of U.S. based startups valued at a billion dollars or more. Others are not as favorably inclined.
